Page 31 - MY Book - My Voice

The third workshop at the Mada Center was a workshop for mothers. They are all known to the sta at the center. Some of the mothers participate in the weekly knit and talking group on Saturdays or attend psychodrama sessions. Some participate in popular education classes. The plan was to hold a three days My Book, My Voice workshop. The theme was going to be the human body, facial expressions, and people in various positions, walking, running or sitting. This time it was going to be a joint drawing, and I had planned to create two or three books with the drawings after the workshop. I had prepared long and narrow sheets of paper, 30 centimeters high and 2.5 meters long, which I planned to fold into a concertina book.Through the drawing-process the participants were going to learn about drawing people, but also composition and scale, and to create an illusion of space and distance in the drawing. We were going to use photos as reference when drawing.During a round of introduction, I got to know a little bit about the participants. They were a lively group that liked to talk, and some of them brought their babies or small children along. Some of the older women told us that they had to lie to their husband to get out of the house, saying they would go shopping. One told her husband she was visiting a friend to have breakfast. Their husbands want them to stay at home, cooking and taking care of the family, all the time. They consider it a waste of time for their wife to learn new things at their age.A young women said that she did what she wanted to go, and that her husband supported her. All the women felt that their duties in the house were a heavy burden, physically and mentally.The participants would draw faces and people with thin black drawing pens. From time to time,we switched places or moved the paper to the other side of the table. The reason for this was to allow everyone to draw many places on the paper, next to the drawing of the others. In the end, the drawings were hung up on the wall, and we tried to imagine what the di erent characters were saying to each other, or what they were thinking. Then the participants added speech-bubbles to the drawings.I was amazed to see how the mothers concentrated on drawing, even with their babies on their arm. After a while, one of the young mothers raised her eyes from the drawing, looked around and said: “It is a long time since I have thought about chores! I have actually achieved something, I have created this drawing!” Another woman said, “this is the rst in a really long time, that I do something only for me.”Photos from the third workshop at Mada Center 201529